


De’oum Luminaï

by boombangbing



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 18:06:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boombangbing/pseuds/boombangbing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a fare crashes through the roof of Darcy's cab, she gets more than she bargained for. (Fifth Element fusion/mash up.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	De’oum Luminaï

**Author's Note:**

> The title means 'Divine Light' in Leeloo's language from the movie. More translations in the end notes.

The muggers in this city are the worst. And by 'the worst' she means literally really bad at mugging.

She keeps her taser pointed at him as he edges away. She almost envies him – he is tweaking on the _good_ drugs, and here she is, down to four cigarettes a day.

“That's a nice hat,” she calls after him.

Being a cabbie wasn't exactly her greatest dream in life, and it definitely wasn't her mother's (she really should call her mom back...), but apparently a political science degree doesn't get you far in this world of rampant consumerism and Tony Stark.

“Good morning, Darcy Lewis,” the cab greets as she gets in. Damn cab's got a sexier voice than she does.

“Hey,” she says, strapping herself in. Safety first and all. As she pulls out of the garage and into the air, one of her delightful fellow drivers almost takes her front bumper off. “Good morning, Brooklyn!” she shouts out of the window.

There's some commotion going on above her with the cops, but when isn't there? She sets the cab to cruise control and brings up the morning news on the touch screen. Murder on Fifth Avenue, spate of jewellery robberies around the city, and somebody dumped something deemed 'mildly toxic' into the water system in New Jersey. Just a normal Monday, then.

Something crashing through her roof _isn't_ so normal, though sadly not unheard of. The cab shudders with the impact and she veers off her designated course.

“You have had an accident,” the cab tells her smugly.

“Yes! I know!” she shouts, gripping the wheel for dear life.

“You have one point left on your license.”

“Thank you!” she yells, dodging oncoming traffic. “Sorry, sorry, everyone!”

It takes her a couple of minutes to wrestle the cab under control and pull back into normal traffic. She grabs her taser from the glovebox and turns around, knocking it against the partition screen.

“Somebody back there? You'd better scoot the fuck out of this cab if you know what's good for you.”

A blond head raises slowly, the clearest, bluest eyes fixing on her. Goddamn, that's an attractive man. Still, strange dude falling out of the sky into her cab? She can't stand for that.

She points the taser at him and his eyes turn scared, ducking back down. “Hey, guy, come on, no hop-ons.”

He makes a funny noise and covers his head with his hands. She lowers the taser a little.

“Ah shit, you're more freaked than I am, aren't you, dude? Did you hit your head on the way down?”

He looks up again, blinking rapidly at her, before his expression smooths out and he starts talking a mile a minute.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, chill,” she says, “I don't speak whatever... is that German? I only speak English and bad English, 'kay?”

He frowns at her, slowing down to a few unintelligible sounds, and it suddenly hits her that he doesn't seem to be wearing any clothes. She leans forward and has a look. He looks down as well. He's wearing some kind of bandage panty thing that looks like it's out of some of the weirder porn she's watched over the years.

“Okay...” she says, looking back up at him. He stares back blankly. “I'm thinking you just escaped from somewhere?” Somewhere he should probably go back to. 

He frowns at her again – dude's got some expressive eyebrows – and starts talking again. “Boom,” he says, pointing upwards. “Boom, boom!”

“Yeah, you're a big dude, big fucking boom when you crashed in here.”

He grins and starts babbling again, gesturing through the roof and then out the window. It's crazy, but she's actually kind of following his train of thought – it seems like he was somewhere, and then he was running and then... He bangs his palms against the partition and his hands smash right through. She has the taser in his face again in a split second. He shies back, holding up his bleeding hands, and makes a pathetic little whimpering sound.

“Okay, okay, sorry, no more boom, okay?” she says, making a show of putting the taser down on the front passenger seat. He says something else and looks at his hands. Fuck, there are pieces of glass sticking out of his palms.

“Shit, that looks nasty,” she says. She grabs some tissues as he picks the glass out with a curious expression on his face. “Gimme your hand,” she says, holding out the tissues. He frowns at her and glances at the taser. “I'm just going to take a look, promise.”

He tips his head to one side, then smiles and sticks his hand through the convenient hole he made in the partition. There's a shard of glass embedded near his thumb, and she's not sure if she should take it out, but she can't really leave it there, either. “This is gonna hurt, okay?” she says. He blinks. Well, he get the picture in a second, anyway. She wraps the tissue around the glass and pulls it out. He blinks again. “You didn't even feel that, did you?” she asks. His fingers twitch in her grasp, and he smiles. PCP's a terrible thing, man. 

She wipes the blood away and removes the tissue to have a look. “Next stop, the ER, I guess...” she murmurs before trailing off. The wound is half the size than it was thirty seconds ago, and the rest is rapidly healing up. She turns his hand over and runs her fingertips across his perfectly smooth skin. He has a funny looking tattoo on the inside of his wrist, too, a cube rendered in 3D. 

“What the...” she says quietly, as he closes his fingers around hers. She looks up at his face again. He's smiling at her again, all soft and sweet.

“What the hell are you?”

A police siren starts up before he can answer – not that she was actually expecting any kind of answer out of him.

“This is police control, please keep your hands on the wheel. You have an unauthorised passenger in your vehicle, we are going to arrest him. Thank you for your cooperation.”

He looks at the bright lights being shone into the cab, and whines in distress. She sighs. He's cute, but for all she knows, he could be a grade A psycho. “I guess that's your ride,” she says.

She opens the door for the cops, as he gets increasingly distressed. He scoots along the seat, away from the open door. “H-- help,” he stammers.

Oh, now he talks. “Look, I...” She turns and looks at him as the cop throws out a rope and starts tethering the cars together to stop her from just taking off. This isn't her first time at the rodeo. “I can't, okay? I don't even know you.”

“Help,” he repeats, pressing his back against the opposite door of the cab. “Help, pl... _please_.”

“Guy, I can't. I've got one point left on my license, I'm broke, you're a nut, you know how it is.” Somehow, she really doubts that he does, though.

“ _Help_ ,” he pleads. The cops are starting to haul the cab in, and they've got some big ass guns on them and...

Fuck it, she doesn't like being a cabbie anyway, no one ever tips right. She turns back to the front and revs the engine. “Hold on to something,” she calls, and floors it.

The tether comes free, taking some of the cab with it, and the cab starts squawking about how many points she's lost _now_. “I _know_ ,” she snaps, and tases the voice box. Damn, she's been wanting to do that for ages.

Her passenger is smiling in the back seat, holding onto the upholstery as she swerves around traffic. “Glad you're enjoying yourself!” she calls to him.

“Danko!” he replies.

“Sure, dude, whatever.”

It's not long before they pick up about ten cop cars in pursuit, and she's veering all over the place. She can hear him thumping around in the back, and she does normally guarantee a slightly less turbulent ride, but desperate times and everything.

“I'm going take us down into the fog, hold on!” she calls, before dipping the nose of the cab down and plunging into the grey fog. She's never been happier about pollution than she is now. 

She goes down as far as she can, until she can barely see a foot from the cab. That's no guarantee that the cops won't find them, though, and she's really quite invested in not getting caught, now. She eyes a couple of buildings about three foot apart.

“Fuck,” she mutters, “this is gonna to be a tight squeeze.”

He mumbles something, but she ignores it, tipping the nose of the car up and edging in between the buildings. The hood scrapes across the bricks, sounding like nails on a chalkboard, but it hardly matters now, the cab is already banged the fuck up. She sighs and lies there a second. 

“They'll give up looking soon,” she says quietly. “Cops in this city are for shit.”

There's a tap-tap-tap on the partition, and she turns her head to find him peering out of the hole at her. “P...priest...” he stammers.

“Priest? Buddy, you need an exorcist.”

“J...ane Fossster,” he forces out.

“Jane Foster? That your priest? Priestess?”

“Jane Foster,” he says more vehemently.

“Right, okay, Jane Foster.”

He grins. “Jane Foster!”

“Okay, dude, I get it, you want to go see her?”

He frowns for a minute, then takes a breath. “Jane--”

“Foster, yeah,” she finishes for him. “Give it another ten minutes, we'll see if we can find her.”

-

Jane Foster looks them up and down, focusing in on his bandage panty things. “I think you're looking for my neighbour, down the hall, first on the left.” Then she slams the door closed on them.

He looks at Darcy and frowns. “Jane Foster?” he asks.

She sighs and knocks on the door again. When it's not answered again, she hammers on it with her fist, and shouts, “We're looking for Jane Foster, and after the morning I've had with this guy, we are not leaving until we talk to her!” She keeps hammering on the door. “Lady, I can do this all day, I grew up with four brothers!”

The door is finally wrenched open again. “ _Yes_ , what do you want?” Jane asks irritably.

“Jane Foster!” he says, and thrusts his wrist in her face.

“Excuse me, what are you do-- Oh. Oh, oh, _fuck_ ,” she says, grabbing hold of his wrist and looking at the tattoo. “Erik! Erik, get in here!” she shrieks, turning tail and running back into the apartment.

Darcy looks at him as he drops his arm back to his side. “I think that was our invite. After you.”

Jane comes back out with this Erik guy, practically jumping on the spot. “Show him your wrist!” she says.

Darcy's passenger frowns, as always. She takes hold of his arm and lifts it up to show them. “He doesn't speak English so much.”

“Good God,” Erik says, squinting at the tattoo, “it's really him!”

“Who is he?” Darcy asks, but the two of them disappear into the back again, totally ignoring her. She clears her throat and lets go of his arm. “So, uh...” she says, looking up at him. “What's your name?”

He tips his head to one side.

“You know, name?” She taps her chest. “Mine's Darcy.”

He looks at his own chest, and presses his fingers to it. “Dar-cee?”

“No, that's called your chest, your... very broad, bare... chest.” Head in the game, Lewis, come on. She waves a hand at her face. “My name is Darcy, and your name is...?”

He touches his face. “Dar-cee?”

“Wow, you're kind of smart ass, huh?” She pulls her ID out of her pocket and holds it up to her face, pointing at the picture, then at herself. “I'm Darcy, see? Darcy and Darcy?”

He bites his... full... bottom lip – damn, it's been a while since she's got any – then flattens his hand to his chest. “Steve.”

“'Steve'?” she repeats. “All of that for 'Steve'?”

He smiles good-naturedly. “Name Steve.”

“All right,” she says, “nice to meet you, Steve.” She holds out her hand and he stares at it. “This is a handshake,” she says, and takes his right hand, shaking it up and down. “Okay, lesson over.” He doesn't let go of her hand when she pulls it away, though, so she ends up just pulling him closer. Oh Jesus, he really needs to put some clothes on.

“Okay,” Jane says, reappearing by them in fancy looking robes, “thanks for bringing him round, we'll take it from here...”

Steve looks excited at Jane's change of outfit and smiles; the robe has the same design as his tattoo on it. That's probably not a coincidence. 

“You can go,” Jane adds.

Steve really doesn't want to let go of her hand though. “Darcy,” he repeats, looking between the two of them. “Darcy help please?”

“He doesn't seem to want me to go,” she says. “How about you get the guy some non-fetish clothes?”

“Erik!” Jane says. “Get him some of your clothes!”

They give him some clothes, which are baggy on his lean physique, but Erik is as tall as him, so they fit. They also give him food, which is a _big_ hit. Foster and Erik stand back as he shovels it into his mouth.

“Dude, it's like you haven't eaten in weeks,” Darcy says, hunkering down beside him.

He grins at her, bread caught between his teeth. Clearly his mom never taught him to chew with his mouth closed. He holds out a slice of buttered toast to her.

“Thanks,” she says, taking it from him. He looks inordinately pleased with himself.

“Oh Lord, he has a crush on her,” Erik says, rolling his eyes. “The Supreme Being has a crush on a _cab_ driver.”

Jane shushs him. 

Darcy takes a bite of the toast and looks at Steve. “You got a crush on me, Steve?”

“Darcy,” he replies, and smiles again. That's a smile that must have broken a hundred hearts already...

“Wait a minute.” She turns back to Erik and Jane. “'Supreme being'? Ah, Jesus, are you guys some kind of cult? I thought you didn't look like real priests.”

Jane puts her nose in the air. “We are _not_ a cult. We are priests of the Asgardian key.”

“Nothing about that doesn't sound like a cult.”

Jane tuts at her and looks at Steve. “Where is the case?” She mimes a square. “Case? With the tesseracts?”

He looks thoughtful for a moment, then starts talking a mile a minute again. Foster looks at him, nodding along, face growing increasingly horrified. “It was stolen? Who would do that?”

Steve shakes his head, waving his hands, and keeps on talking.

Foster screws up her face in concentration. “He says... the case is empty and... the guardians... gave the tesseracts... to someone they could trust... who took another route... he's supposed to contact this person... in a... place? Maybe a hall? That doesn't really translate very well.”

Steve wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and jumps up, going over to an ancient looking computer. He drops down in front of it, and starts typing. He types almost as fast as he talks, and they all gather around him to look.

“What are you doing?” Darcy asks, gesturing at the screen.

He looks at Jane and says something.

“He's looking for the address,” she says.

“Dot,” Steve says, pointing at the screen.

“And he's found it,” Jane adds. “Planet Valhalla, in the Yggrasil Constellation.”

“Okay,” Darcy says, “so my question remains this: supreme being?”

Jane sighs in disgust. “He's the Supreme Being and the saviour of the universe.”

Steve looks up at Darcy and smiles. She pats him on the shoulder. “Really, this guy? The guy who landed in my cab this morning in his underwear?”

Steve turns and looks at Jane, as if waiting for an answer. 

“Well, I think he's doing pretty well for a guy who's been alive for less than twenty four hours.”

“What?”

Erik clears his throat. “There were once three tesseracts brought here by the Asgardians in World War II. Two were in the form of cubes, and the third was a human. They were attacked and unable to leave the tesseracts here, but they promised to bring them back before Ragnarök. And they did, a few days ago, but their ship was attacked and destroyed. All that was left of the third tesseract was a hand. Steve was genetically engineered from the DNA of that destroyed tesseract. He alone is the Divine Light and the saviour of the world.”

How dramatic. “What's 'Ragnarök'?”

“The apocalypse. It's a cyclical event, in the form of a ball of black fire hurtling towards the Earth. If it hits it'll wipe all life out in the known universe,” Jane says. “It's about a day out.”

“Uh huh. So, you're saying that he's a clone?”

Jane shrugs. “I suppose so, yes.”

Darcy nods and looks back down at Steve. “I've never met a clone before.”

“Mo vano né achan'chinou hila hämasen, bom deno dayodomo kala,” he says.

“Same to you, I guess...” Darcy replies.

“He says he didn't like the men – I guess he means the scientists that 'cloned' him – but that you're very nice,” Jane translates.

“Oh, well,” Darcy says, feeling herself blush under Steve's steady gaze. He seemed kind of childish before, but he's rapidly becoming more mature and aware of what's happening, and apparently that's her brain's code for 'totally bangable'. “Thank you, you're very nice too.” She's not sure how much, if any, he understood of that, but he smiles and blushes a little himself.

“We're all going to die,” Erik mutters irritably. 

“So you believe us?” Jane says.

Darcy shrugs. “Sure. I've heard stranger, and he does have a pretty heroic jawline. I've still got one question, though: what language is he speaking?”

“The Divine Language.”

“It's just called the 'Divine Language'?”

“Yes,” Jane says.

“So, it's not German?”

“No.”

“Okay, well...” She pats his shoulder again. “What do we do now?”

-

All the flights out to Valhalla are booked solid for a week because there's some kind of contest being held to be a VIP guest at Stark Expo. Fucking Tony Stark.

“Stark?” Steve asks, tearing his eyes away from Foster and Erik's pacing.

“He's just some asshole, nothing to worry about,” Darcy says.

“Ass... hole?” he repeats. Shit, he's like her little cousin who delighted in repeating every bad word that ever slipped out of her mouth.

“Yeah, you know, like a... a bad person?” She bares her teeth and makes claw hands for a moment. “You know?”

He laughs. “Y'am ferji kidoun.”

“Sure, a yam ferji kidoun.”

“What if we won the contest?” Jane says.

Erik shakes his head. “Entries closed a few hours ago.”

“No, I mean, what if we _definitely_ won?”

“Then... our problems would be solved. Are you suggesting that we hack their system?”

Jane shrugs. “It sure would be great if we could, wouldn't it?”

“I can do that,” Darcy says. They both turn and look at her. 

“You can?” Jane asks.

“Sure, I mean, I've done some hacking over the years, I can give it a shot, at least.”

She goes over to their computer and pulls up the contest website. Steve sits down beside her as she starts typing. He watches her fingers move, then looks up at the screen, then looks at her face. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye and smirks a little. He starts picking at his sleeve.

It takes her a couple of hours, but she finally does it. Steve is still sitting beside her, waiting patiently, but Erik and Jane have wandered off. She taps her fingers lightly against the keys, thinking for a moment, before she takes the plunge and enters the winners' names as Darcy and Steve Lewis.

“What am I getting myself into?” she asks him quietly.

“Help Steve,” he says, smiling. When isn't he smiling?

“Yeah, help Steve, sure,” she says, and kind of pets his hair for a moment before she remembers herself.

The tickets arrive in Jane's mail shoot a couple of minutes later, and Jane races out to grab them before Darcy can even get up. “You did it! You...” She looks from the envelope to Darcy. “Darcy and Steve Lewis?”

Darcy shrugs. “Oops, my hand must have slipped?”

Before Jane can shout at her or excommunicate her or something, though, someone starts hammering at the door. Jane spins around and stares at the door, then turns back to them.

“In the back!” she hisses, shoving the tickets at Darcy and shooing the two of them through a doorway. Erik looks up as they stumble in.

“What's going on?” he asks.

“I don't know yet,” Jane says, “somebody's at the door. Under no circumstance, _none_ , do you let anyone take him.”

Erik pulls a drawer open and gets out a gun. What the _hell_ kind of priests are these people?

“Go,” he says, “be safe.”

Jane nods and slams the door closed.

“Oh... kay,” Darcy murmurs. She looks at Steve, who seems as affably confused as ever, then at Erik. “What's going on?”

“I suppose we'll find out soon enough,” he says, grimly holding the gun at chest level. Darcy is not comforted.

Steve doesn't seem to be noticing at all. She turns back to him and finds that he's become fascinated by a full length mirror. She walks over to him and taps him on the shoulder. “What are you looking at?”

He points at his mirror image. “Steve?”

It occurs to her that if he really is only twenty four hours old – and she is accepting that premise shockingly easily – then maybe he's never himself in a mirror or a photograph. “Yeah, that's you, buddy. You're pretty cute, huh?” She steps close enough to him to be caught in the mirror's reflection, and he looks at the image of them curiously. They look kind of good together, she can't help but notice.

There's the slam of a door closing and Erik touches his fingers to his lips and opens the door slowly, gun raised. Steve loses interest in the mirror and goes over to the door to check out what's going on.

“You two can come out,” Erik calls, “she's gone.”

Darcy leads Steve back into the living room by his arm. “Gone? Where?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

Erik checks the clock. “We've got six hours until that flight leaves. We wait.”

-

While they wait, she makes up a fake multipass for Steve, which is a snap after hacking the Expo contest website. The hardest part is getting Steve to sit still long enough to take the photo for it.

He gets increasingly agitated as they wait. It's mostly boredom, she reckons; he solves a thirty-sided Rubrik's Cube that Erik has lying around in about three minutes, eats a whole bunch more food, and plays red hands with her for like half an hour, until he bangs his elbow against a table and squeaks.

“You couldn't feel the glass, but that hurts?” she asks, as he rubs at it, trying to twist his arm around enough to look at it. “Well, I guess we all have funny bones.”

Another hour passes in boredom. Steve sits on the couch next to her, shifts around slightly, as if he can't keep the energy from pouring out of him.

“Mo achta man orlo,” he says to Erik.

Erik frowns, and Steve shifts around some more, glancing at Darcy, then sliding his hands up his legs a little. “ _Orlo_ ,” he repeats.

“Oh,” Erik says, and points to a door. “Through there.”

Steve jumps up and strides to the door, slamming it shut behind him.

“What was that about?” Darcy asks.

“He needed to use the bathroom.”

She snorts. “Oh, right. Well, when you've gotta go, you've gotta go.”

After he's been in there for close to ten minutes, she starts to get a little worried. “Should we maybe check on him? Make sure he didn't accidentally flush himself down the toilet?”

Erik looks at the door. “Probably.” He gets up and knocks on the door. “Steve? O deno schichkéman?”

“Monda schichkéman, elgoun'doloun,” he calls in a strangely strangled voice.

Darcy frowns, and is about to ask if something's wrong with him, but the judgy look on Erik's face tells her all she needs to know. “Is he...?” she asks, and Erik turns a bored eye on her. “Is he jerking one out in there?”

Erik takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Perhaps his libido is Ragnarök.”

When Steve eventually comes back out, he sits down on the farthest point from her on the couch. She laughs a little, and he refuses to meet her gaze. His embarrassment doesn't last long, though, and soon they're back to playing red hands.

Jane storms back into the apartment after a couple of hours, and Erik jumps up to check that she's okay.

“O deno schichkéman?” Steve asks.

“I'm fine,” Jane replies, and although Darcy guesses that he doesn't understand what Jane said, he seems satisfied with the answer.

“Who took you?” Erik asks.

“ _Loki_ ,” she says.

“Of Loki Corp?” Darcy asks.

“Yep. He's quite excited about the idea of Ragnarök and doesn't want us to ruin it. He asked me where the cubes were, but I didn't tell him anything.”

“And he just let you go?” 

Jane shrugs. “He's an evil genius, he decided I wasn't threat and therefore wasn't worth his time.” She checks watch. “Jesus, you should have left for the spaceport half an hour ago! Come on, get moving!”

-

 

They arrive at the spaceport in the late afternoon, amidst the absolute chaos of people leaving for Stark Expo. There are enormous billboards on the walls with Stark's smug face proclaiming 'buy Stark!'.

“I should really be going with him,” Jane says, fussing with Steve's jacket. Steve seems more interested in the billboards.

“I'll take good care of him, promise,” Darcy says, just barely managing to keep the mocking tone to a minimum.

Clearly not minimum enough. Jane glares at her. “He's the Divine Light and the Supreme Being of the universe, you better look after him.”

Steve points at one of the billboards. “Asshole?” he says.

“Yup,” Darcy says, wrapping her arm around his waist. “Well, we'd better check in, see you after the world is saved, guys!”

She hustles him away under the glares of Jane and Erik. “You've got great comic timing, dude,” she mutters to him as they approach the check-in desk.

“Danko,” he says. He said that in the cab too, she should probably find out what it means.

The white-haired, blue-uniformed check-in woman smiles almost manically at them. “Good evening, welcome to Stark Spaceport! Tickets?”

Darcy hands them over with a hint of nerves. The tickets are legit, but...

“Congratulations on winning the contest!” check-in lady says. “You're just in time, flight leaves in five minutes. ID?”

“Yup,” she says, sticking her multipass in the reader. It comes up verified.

“And you, sir?” the lady asks Steve.

Steve shoves the multipass in her face. “Steve Lewis, multipass! Mul-ti-pass!” They practised that a lot on the ride over – maybe a little too much, as it turns out. Darcy covers his hand with her own and forces him to put it into the reader.

“Sorry, we're newlyweds, you know? Just met this morning. You know how it is. We bumped into each other, sparks happened...”

“Mul-ti-pass,” Steve repeats.

“Yes, she knows it's a multipass, darling,” Darcy says between gritted teeth. The multipass verifies and she pulls it back out. “Anyway,” she tells the lady, “we're in love.”

The lady barely blinks at the scene – the things she must have seen working here. “Thank you, Mr and Mrs Lewis, here are your boarding passes, gate three, have a nice day!”

“You too!” Darcy says, dragging Steve away. They're about halfway to the gate when alarms start going off. Everyone ignores them except for Steve, who jumps and looks around. 

Darcy checks over her shoulder at where cops are swarming around a couple of angry Chitauris. “Just unauthorised Chitauris,” she says.

“Chi... tauris?” Steve repeats, brow furrowing.

“Yeah, they're an alien race, tried to enslave us a couple hundred years ago, failed, and now there's just a few of them around. They don't do well going through customs.”

Steve still looks confused as they get to the gate. “I'll explain later,” she promises, as she shows the boarding passes.

A stewardess descends on them as soon as they're in the ship. “Excuse me, excuse me, Mrs Lewis?”

“We have passes, we're meant to be here!” Darcy insists, holding them up again.

“Multipass,” Steve says. Oh yeah, the two of them are _awesome_ at this. They're totally the people Darcy would choose to save the universe.

“Of course,” the stewardess says, “Tony Stark needs you for an interview, come on, we're live in thirty seconds!” She grabs Darcy's arm and hauls her away, leaving Steve standing there looking like a lost puppy.

“I'll be back in a second!” she calls.

Staff members start to close in around Steve and he pulls a face. “Help?”

“Tony Stark is the biggest star in the constellation, and he's desperate to talk to you!” the stewardess informs Darcy as she shows her down a series of hallways.

“Yeah... well, I'm on my honeymoon, and I'd really rather not--”

“Daaaarcy Lewis, I presume?” a voice calls out, and suddenly she has a camera and a goatee in her face. “Oh, she is hot, hot, hot, curves in _all_ the right places, gentlemen, get some alone time with your hand because she's going to have you going _all night long_.” He takes a breath. “Anything to say, mama?”

She looks into the camera. “If you don't get that thing out of my face, I'm gonna tase you in the nuts.”

Stark blinks. “That's what she's going to be saying to her husband tonight, _ohhh_.” He holds his arm out to her. “Come with me, baby,” he says, and suddenly she's being hurried along with the crowd as Stark talks to the camera, asking her a dozen questions to which she replies with one word answers. At one point she thinks she sees Jane out of the corner of her eye, but she's shoved down the hall before she can make sure.

Eventually the 'interview' is over and Stark makes a cutting motion across his neck. His posse all start talking at once at him until he waves his hands at them. “Shoo, shoo,” he says, and they scatter like rats. Darcy tries to go with them, but he catches her by the arm.

“Darcy Lewis,” he says, “you weren't a very good guest.”

“Sorry, dude, but you're not a very good host.”

He sighs expansively and throws his hands in the air. “I _know_ , right? What am I doing wrong? Is it my clothes, my facial hair, my stunning good looks? Do I make people feel inferior?”

Darcy shrugs. “You just have a generally asshole-y vibe about you.”

His shoulders slump. “That's what I was afraid of.”

He looks kind of sad, and he's undeniably hot up close, but she's left Steve alone too long as it is. She throws a thumb over her shoulder. “Dude, I've gotta go, okay?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, yeah, go,” he says, waving his hand dismissively.

A stewardess shows her to her bunk, where Steve is already sitting.

“Hey,” she says.

“Darcy,” he replies, smiling.

She settles down next to him in the bunk, though it's more like a little hole cut out of the wall that's padded on all sides, and clears her throat. “So, I guess we're room mates, huh?”

He tips his head to one side and furrows his brow a little.

She shakes her head. “Never mind.”

Steve's silent for a few minutes, looking very closely at his hands (she guesses that when everything's new to a person, even the lines of their hands are fascinating), while Darcy pulls her tablet out and starts tapping on it idly. _Awkward_.

“Darcy?” he says after a while.

She looks up from the cat video she's watching. “Yeah?”

“Chitauris?”

“Oh, right, I said I'd explain later, didn't I? Okay, so there was this war in 2012 between us and the Chitauris. You know what war is?” It's obvious from his expression that he doesn't. She makes a blowing up motion with her hands. “You know, war? Lots of ferji kidouns doing shit to each other?”

His eyebrows jump. “Ferji,” he repeats.

“Right, well, that was the Third World War.”

“Third?” he asks.

“Yeah, we had first, second, third, and fourth, although some people argue that since the fourth one was fought in space it wasn't really a _world_ war. That was in, uh, shit...” She taps on her tablet and brings up wikipedia. “Oh, yeah, 2130, little under a hundred years ago. Man, I should really have remembered that.”

“Second?” he asks.

She frowns. Does he even know what these words mean? “Um, that one was in...” She checks wikipedia again. “1939. Long time ago.”

He gestures at the tablet. “Makna mo vigo min kan?” he asks.

“Uh...” she murmurs, and he gestures a little harder at the tablet. “Oh, you want to look at this? Sure.”

She hands it over and he smiles. “Danko,” he says, and starts tapping his fingertip against the screen. She'd give him some pointers, but he seems to getting the hang of it just fine. He taps on it for a few minutes, eyebrows drawing together, before he stops. “Cap-tin Amer-ree-ca?” he sounds out.

“Captain America? Oh yeah, he was some supposed superhero guy who apparently helped win the Second World War, but most historians think the whole thing was an elaborate hoax, if I'm remembering US history 100 correctly. No one could ever find his remains or even a record of his death.”

Steve swipes his finger up the screen and holds it up beside his face like she did with her ID earlier. “Steve and Steve?” he asks, pointing to the picture on the page.

She leans in and squints at the picture. “Whoa, that really...” She takes the tablet back and double taps the screen to zoom in on the picture. “That _really_ looks like you.” She scrolls back up to the top of the page. It says: 'Captain America'.

“Steve,” he says, pointing to the tablet.

“Yeah... Erik did say that the Asgardians visited Earth in the Second World War, right?”

Steve raises his eyebrows.

“Right, yeah. So, you're a clone of Captain America?”

“Mo bana menda y'am eto oum seno.”

She nods. “Sure. Well, I guess we've solved the mystery of Captain America, huh? And hey, now we know what your full name is. It says here, 'Steve Rogers'.”

“Steve Lewis,” he says.

“Yeah, that's what we're telling everyone, but your real last name is 'Rogers'. See?” She holds the tablet out and points to the name.

He looks at it for a moment. “Lewis,” he repeats.

She raises an eyebrow. “Okay, dude. Lewis.”

He grins and leans back against the padded wall of the bunk.

The stewards turn the outside lights off a few minutes later, and she scoots down on the mattress. “Better catch some shut eye, we've got a busy day ahead of us tomorrow.”

He frowns.

“You know, sleeping?” she says, and presses her palms together, leaning her cheek on them and shutting her eyes. When she opens her eyes again, he's nodding, and scooting down as well.

“Okay,” she says, and switches off the overhead light. “Good night.”

Steve turns his head to her. He's lying comically ramrod straight. “Met envolet kala.”

“Yep, you too,” she says and closes her eyes.

She'd have thought that it would be awkward trying to sleep beside a guy she's known for less than twelve hours (not to mention a guy who's just a day old), and she's never stuck around after one night stands long enough to find out how uncomfortable she feels about literally sleeping with strange men. Soon, though, she's drifting off, despite – or maybe _because_ – of how much heat Steve is throwing out next to her. It's been a long day, is all.

When she wakes up hours later, the glow from her tablet is softly lighting the bunk, the tablet itself in the hands of Steve, who seems to have worked out how to use the stylus without much trouble.

“Hey,” she says thickly and clears her throat.

“Hel-lo,” Steve replies haltingly.

“Hey, you're getting good at English, dude.”

“Danko,” he says, then pauses. “Thank you.”

“So _that's_ what that means,” she says.

He nods. “Yes.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

He pouts a little as he thinks. Any inappropriate thoughts that she has are just post sleep fuzziness. He shakes his head. “Ten hamast’met mina, monda mann’oum kiba santonoï'aypa envolet.”

She rubs at her eyes. “Maybe you can go to sleep and wake up knowing a whole 'nother language, but I'm not a supreme being, so...”

He takes a breath. “I... sleep not? Not made to... need...”

“You don't need to sleep?”

He nods. “Don't need to sleep.”

“Oh, well, that's cool, I guess. Comes in handy, anyway. I don't think I'd want to give it up altogether though. Sleeping's good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah, like, nice? Not ferji?”

“Kala,” he says.

“'Kala'? That means good?”

“Yes. You are kala.”

She smiles. “Well, so are you.”

He ducks his head, looking back at the tablet. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

“So, what are you doing with my tablet there?” she asks, crawling over to him.

He tips the tablet towards her and smiles nervously. On the screen is an incredibly detailed drawing of her laughing, her name written under it in shaky lettering.

“Wow, did you draw that?”

“Yes. Like?”

“Yeah, wow, that's amazing. How did you learn how to do that?”

He shrugs and swipes his finger over the screen, switching to another drawing. “Me,” he says, pointing at it.

“I see that.” The picture he's drawn of himself is just as detailed, but lacks all the emotion of hers. The Steve he's drawn is completely blank, which she guesses makes sense since he's only seen himself twice, once in the mirror, and once in the picture they took of him for the multipass, and he wasn't smiling either time, but it still makes her feel a little sad. Underneath the picture he's written, 'Stevve'.

“Oh,” she says, “'Steve' only has one V.”

He frowns. “I have...?”

“No, no, your name. This is a V,” she says, pointing to the letter. “There's only one V in your name, not two.”

“Oh,” he says, wiping his thumb across the name and erasing it. “Oops.”

She laughs at how casually he says it, and he grins.

“We are beginning our descent into Valhalla. Please remain in your bunks,” a voice says over the speaker system.

“Looks like it's showtime,” she says.

Steve leans over and looks out of the little porthole window. “Showtime,” he murmurs.

-

They're shown to the plushiest hotel room she's ever seen. It's like something out of those classic movies from the 1990s.

“Mr Stark needs you on stage in ten,” the lady says. “You're so lucky to have won this contest, isn't he wonderful?”

“Sure,” Darcy says. “Know where we can get a change of clothes?”

“Jarvis,” the lady says.

“Good afternoon, Mr and Mrs Lewis,” a British voice says, and a rack full of clothes slides out from the wall. Steve frowns and looks up at the ceiling.

“I'll be back shortly,” the lady says, and leaves.

Darcy eyes the room. “Well, I guess if I die today, at least I can say I stayed in a really nice hotel once.”

“We are not dying,” Steve says, looking at her reproachfully.

She really isn't so sure about that, and she guesses that it shows on her face, because he suddenly takes a couple of ridiculously long strides over to her and gently lays his hands on her shoulders. “I am Divine Light, I protect you.”

“Sure you are,” she says, patting one of his hands. 

“I _am_ ,” he insists, squeezing her shoulders, sounding like a petulant child.

“Okay,” she says, dropping her hands to his waist, “okay, I believe you.”

“Okay,” he repeats, frowning a little as he continues to stare at her. She's not certain but she's pretty sure that they're doing that slowly-moving-towards-each-other-for-a-kiss thing that people do in movies. Steve licks his lips and she takes a breath, and then...

“Mr and Mrs Lewis, you are needed on stage in five minutes. I suggest that you change into appropriate clothing.”

Darcy shakes herself. “Yeah, right, ugh, come on, Steve, let's get this show on the road.”

He nods. “Showtime.”

-

Jarvis's idea of 'appropriate clothing' seems kind of off, Darcy muses, but then so does Steve's. She pulls out a button down shirt and jacket, while Steve picks a pair of nearly skin tight gold pants, a figure hugging white t-shirt, and these orange suspender thingies.

“That's what you're going with?” she asks.

Steve looks down at himself. The clothes are so tight that she can practically see each of his muscles moving under his skin. “Yes. I like... this,” he says, jabbing a finger at one of the straps. “The colour.”

“Orange,” she says.

“Orange,” he repeats. “I like it.”

She reaches over and snaps the strap. “It looks good on you.”

Steve smiles and looks away nervously. 

The lady comes back a minute later and hurries them to the edge of the stage as Stark grandstands for the hysterically excited audience.

Steve looks at her. “I don't... understand?”

“What don't you understand?”

He points to Stark.

“Nobody understands Stark.”

“We need... case. No time for... this,” he says, gesturing at Stark again.

“I know, but we don't even know who we're looking for, do we? Maybe if they're here, they'll come to us.”

Steve wrinkles his nose up as lights start flashing manically. “May... be.”

“That's your cue!” a stage hand hisses, shoving the two of them out on stage.

Stark throws his arms wide as they edge out on stage. Darcy's never been one for shyness, but this is testing her self-confidence. Steve just looks confused. “Giiive it up for D-d-darcy and Steve Lewis!”

There's a ridiculous amount of cheering, and she wouldn't be surprised if half the people here were actually LMDs, because who can find that much enthusiasm for two randoms off the street? Stark slides up to her and sticks the mike in her face. “So, darling, how's the trip been so far?” he purrs.

“Okay,” she says.

“Only okay? Has your man not being satisfying you, baby? Because I can give him some tips.” He thrusts the mike into Steve's face. “Steve?”

“Uh,” Steve murmurs.

“A man of few words there, Steve-o?”

Darcy reaches up and pulls the mike back to her face. “He doesn't speak English very well.”

“Ah well, love is its own language,” Stark says, and winks. “So, how did you two lovebirds meet?”

“Well... I'm a cab driver and he was a big fare that just sort of... fell into my lap.”

Stark wiggles his eyebrows. “I wouldn't mind a hunk or two falling into _my_ lap, hey, party people?”

The crowd whoops and Stark turns back to them, ignoring Darcy and Steve for a moment. Steve touches her wrist.

“He's here,” he says quietly.

“Who's here?”

“The man with the case.”

“How do you know?”

Steve shrugs. “I just know. We go. Now.”

“Ehhh.” She looks out onto the crowd. There's no way to get away without everyone seeing. Embarrassing. She weighs it up: momentary embarrassment, or the world being destroyed? It's close, but she's going to have to go with momentary embarrassment.

“C'mon,” she whispers, taking his hand. 

They edge slowly off stage, and at first no one really pays attention, so absorbed in Stark (Stark included), but then he touches his fingers to his headset and turns around.

“Starting your honeymoon early, Lewises?”

Darcy pulls on Steve's hand. “Just run.”

They barrel past the stage crew and onto the floor. Darcy looks around and spots a set of double doors that proclaim 'EXIT'. “Through here!” she says, pulling him towards it.

They stumble out into a hallway, Stark's voice drifting after them, “Boy, _someone's_ horny.”

“Now what?” she asks.

Steve points down the hall. “This way.” They make it about twenty feet down the brightly lit hall, still holding hands, and turn a corner to be met with a big dude in gold armour and a helmet standing there holding a sword.

“That the guy?” she whispers to Steve, because if he _isn't_ then he's just a dude standing in a hallway with a sword, and she knows that this is Stark Expo, but...

“Mo asountimon hila oualarta, De’oum luminaï,” helmet guy says.

“He's the guy,” Darcy murmurs.

Steve squeezes her fingers briefly, then lets go of her hand and steps forward. “Danko,” he says. 

Helmet guy nods, and turns on his heel, setting off down the hall. Steve looks back at her. “We follow,” he says.

“Yep, follow the dude dressed to do battle with King Midas, sure.”

Steve frowns, and reaches out to take her hand again, folding their fingers together. “Explain to me later,” he says, urging her to follow their new friend.

Helmet guy leads them into a room and walks over to a trunk, which he kneels in front of and begins unlocking. “Mo mavano etot elgoun’dolouna y'am tchaï’gaban, De’oum luminaï. Monda hila akilet oum mino parsousanen,” he says as he reaches into the trunk.

“He says he has waited a... lifetime,” Steve translates quietly. “He is last of his kind.”

“What's his kind?”

“He is Heimdall of Asgard.”

“Did he tell you that?” She doesn't remember hearing the word 'Asgard', and she thinks she would have picked up on it after the day's events.

Steve taps his head. “I just know.”

“Right,” she says, as Heimdall steps in front of Steve and hands him the case.

“Danko,” Steve says.

“Yeah, danko,” Darcy adds, and takes hold of Steve's wrist. “Now what?”

“I...” Steve looks down at the case. “I don't know.”

“Well--” She doesn't get to finish her thought, though, before there are suddenly Chitauris crashing in from all over the place. Darcy pulls her taser out and clips a few of them, though they barely notice, before Steve pushes the case into her arms and shoves her out of the way.

Watching him – and Heimdall, but she's mostly paying attention to Steve – is amazing. He's gorgeous in motion, even more gorgeous than she'd already thought. He moves faster than her brain can really process, spinning in a circle and knocking them down like skittles, twisting and ducking and just generally wiping the floor with them. Okay, she thinks, maybe he _is_ a supreme being. He definitely ain't a regular one.

When he stops, there are Chitauris littering the floor.

“Dude,” she says.

Steve turns to her, not a drop of sweat or blood on him, and grins.

“Thank you for making this so much easier,” a smooth voice says.

“Loki,” Heimdall says, and Darcy turns to see another member of the gold helmet club. Heimdall doesn't get much further before Loki turns the big ass staff thing he's holding on him, and freezes him in place. Shit. 

Then he turns it on her.

Double shit.

“Miss, the case, please.”

She looks at the case. Shit, one life versus trillions. She's no mathematician and no hero, but even she gets that one.

Steve sees it differently, though, stepping smoothly in front of her. He takes the case from her and pitches it at Loki, then grabs her around the middle and fucking jumps, knocking a ceiling tile loose and pulling them up into the air vent. He deposits her in the vent and pushes her forward, hand landing on her ass. She blinks and looks around at him, and he pushes her some more. Okay, shelve that etiquette lesson for later.

“Go, go,” he says. 

“I'm crawling as fast as I can! You gave him the fucking tesseracts!”

“You are more important,” he says.

“Than the whole universe?”

“You are part of the universe.”

“I think you're missing the point, dude.”

He huffs and pushes at her ass again – they're having a serious talk later – and she rolls her eyes. “I'm going, I'm going.”

The shooting starts when they get over the convention hall. “Shit,” she murmurs, listening to the sounds of gun fire and screaming. “Should we...?”

She looks back at Steve, whose head is cocked to one side. “Steve?”

His eyes snap to hers. “Move,” he says, shoving her again. She slides a good three feet down the vent this time.

“Steve!” she shrieks as the gun fire starts up again, getting closer and closer until she can hear them ricocheting off the vent. “Shit!” she shouts, curling up as small as she can as blasts blow holes through the metal around them. Points of light outline her body but none hit, which has to be about the luckiest fucking coincidence in the world. The gun fire moves on, further up the vent, completely destroying metal sheeting there.

“Shit,” she repeats, looking back at Steve. “Now what?”

He lifts his head, breathing heavily. “Down,” he says, and punches out the sheet of metal between them. “Come on,” he says, crawling through and dropping down.

She carefully turns around, and peers out over the edge of the hole Steve's made. He, of course, landed on his feet. “That's a twenty five feet drop!” she yells at him. “I can't make that, you lunatic!”

He takes out a couple of Chitauris that come at him, then looks up at her. “Jump,” he calls.

“I'm not jumping!” she shouts. “Weren't you listening, I'll break my fucking neck!”

He holds his arms out. “Jump!” he says. “I'll catch you. Trust.”

“Oh, for fuck...” She shakes her head. “I will haunt the shit out of you if this kills me!”

She sits up, dangles her legs out of the vent, curses the universe for being such an uncompromising dick to her, and pushes off.

Miraculously, he does catch her, one arm around under her legs and the other around her back, and she can't help but think for a moment that they fit together pretty well, before his knees buckle and he hits the ground with a grunt of pain.

She rolls out of his arms and scrambles up. “What's wr--” She sees the problem, though: he's bleeding from his side, right around where his left kidney would be (or is, do Supreme Beings have kidneys?). “Oh, fuck, _fuck_ , you got shot.”

“Not... bad...” he murmurs, momentarily staunching the flow of blood with his fingers before it spills out between them.

“'Not bad'!” she screeches. “You got fucking _shot_.”

“It will... heal,” he says, and presses his bloody fingers to her shirt, “faster than you.”

Oh, _fuck_ , that's why he shoved her down the vent. She cups his face in her hands. “You took an energy blast for me? Dude, you haven't even bought me dinner yet!”

Steve blinks at her, and opens his mouth to say something, but Stark cuts in first.

“Kissing later!” he yells. “Aliens everywhere! What the fuck is going on?”

Darcy grabs a couple of guns off the fallen Chitauris and hands one to Stark. 

“What am I meant to do with this?” he asks.

“Shoot them if they come at you!”

“I don't know how to use a gun!”

“Aren't you a weapons developer?”

“I develop weapons, I don't _use_ them, I'm not a barbarian!”

Darcy winds an arm around Steve's waist and helps him up. “Well, then it's time to get down with your bad self, Stark.” She looks up at Steve. “We've got to go after that Loki dude.”

He shakes his head. “Case empty.”

“That one's empty too? You knew that all along?”

“No, just... now, misdirection” he says, tapping his head. “Loki has realised.”

“Are you psychic?” Stark asks. “Is he psychic? Who's Loki?”

“Down!” Darcy yells as another group of Chitauris appear. She gets off a round of shots in their general direction, but that just makes them madder. “Run!” she yells, dragging Steve along with her as best she can.

They tear down another corridor, Stark yelling obscenities behind them, until she finds a bit of cover by an archway. “I'm a billionaire!” he yells. “Things like this aren't meant to happen to me! They're meant to happen to, to, _you_!” he continues, waving his hands at her.

“That promise of a taser to the nuts is still good, Stark,” she says.

The top of the archway blows apart into dust and shards of paint, and she throws her arms up to block it out.

“This is my best suit!” Stark cries.

“Chitauris are drones,” she remembers suddenly. “If we get the head guy, we're good.” If she gets out of this alive, she is _so_ sending flowers to her Alien Entities 101 professor. “Just gotta work out which one.”

“We have a hostage!” a gravelly voice calls. “Give us the case!”

“That one, probably,” she decides.

She edges closer to the archway, and Steve clutches at her. She cups his cheek. “Trust,” she says.

“I do,” he says.

That's good, because she is so full of bullshit right now.

“ _I_ don't trust you!” Stark adds.

“Shut it,” she says, waving the gun in his face. She steps closer to the archway, and peers around the side. One of the Chitauris has a gun to... _Jane Foster's_ head. Goddamnit, all these people are fucking crazy.

“Okay,” she mutters, “okay, I can do this, I knew one day all those vintage Halo games would come to something.”

“What are you muttering about?” Stark asks.

She holds the gun up in front of her face and takes a breath. She lets go of Steve, leaving him to lean more heavily against the wall, and steps out into the open, raising the gun, aiming as best she can, and lets off a shot, closing her eyes at the last second.

A couple of seconds later and she's still standing, so she risks opening one eye. Holy shit, she actually got the dude, and there are dropped Chitauris littering the ground around Jane.

“You almost killed me!” Jane shrieks.

“It's a good thing you're short, then!” she shoots back. “Jeez, you just try and help stop the universe from going boom, and this is the thanks you get! Why do I even bother?”

Steve stumbles out from their hiding spot, hand pressed his side. “Are you okay?”

She flips the safety on and stuffs the gun in her waistband. “Yeah, yeah, I'm good, are you okay?”

She holds her hands out to steady him again, and he leans heavily against her. “Fine,” he murmurs.

“What have you done to him?” Jane asks, stepping over motionless bodies to come fuss over him. “You were supposed to look after him!”

“Look, for a cabbie, I think I did okay. Just chill for a second before your brain starts leaking out of your ears.”

“Still need the tesseracts,” Steve murmurs into Darcy's hair. “Not long now.”

“The other case was empty, too,” she explains.

Jane checks her watch. “We've got five hours.”

“What the hell are tesseracts?” Stark asks, creeping out from under the cover.

“They're blue energy cubes,” Jane says, “two of them.”

Stark frowns. “I've got some of those.”

“What?” Darcy and Jane says together.

Stark shrugs. “Yeah, cube things? They power the arc reactor that runs this place. I just got them a couple of days ago, from some mysterious dude in a gold helmet.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Darcy says. “Show us.”

“I'm not giving them to you!” he says. “They're mine!”

Darcy yanks the gun out of her waistband and levels it at him. “I'm a cab driver, okay, man, don't push me.”

Stark puts his hands up. “Okay, okay, I get it, Annie Oakley.”

“Move it, Jesse James,” Darcy says, motioning with the gun.

-

He's not kidding about the tesseracts powering the place. This arc reactor of his is this huge thing sunken into the ground, whirring away madly. Darcy peers over railings. “Shut it down,” she says.

Stark huffs and mutters something under his breath.

Darcy taps the gun against the railing. “Shut it down, Stark.”

“ _Fine_ ,” he says, and goes over to fiddle with the controls. After a couple of minutes the lights flicker off, then come back on dimmer. “Generator,” he says, “won't last long.”

He kneels down and pulls off a panel, tinkering under there for a moment before he comes back out with two two blue cubes in his hands. 

“That's them,” Jane says, swooping in and plucking them out of Stark's hands. Darcy takes a step forward and looks at them.

Goddamn, but they are the exact same shade of blue as Steve's eyes. “Wow,” she murmurs. “Steve, look at these things...”

She looks back at Steve, who's sitting on the floor, against a wall, breathing heavily. “Hey, buddy,” she says softly, dropping down beside him, “you okay?”

He nods. “Hurts, but... I'll be fine.”

She pets his hair. “Still sucks, though, right?”

“'Sucks'?”

“Ferji,” she says.

He snorts. “Then, yes: sucks.”

“We're almost done, you've just gotta... do whatever you do now.”

His eyes drift to Jane. “I don't know what to do,” he says quietly. “I have to take them somewhere, but I don't know where.”

“That's okay,” she says, squeezing his shoulder, “Jane'll know.”

She leaves him on the floor and rejoins, Jane and Stark. “Hey, Mother Superior, got any ideas where all this saving the universe crap is going to go down?”

Jane wrinkles her nose. “Yes, I know where it's 'going down'. We need to get to the city of Asgard.”

“Asgard? Hasn't that place been abandoned for hundreds of years?”

“Exactly. We need a ship.”

“I have a ship!” Stark says. “In fact, I've got several.”

“You'll let us take one?” Jane asks.

Stark shrugs. “Long as I can come. I'm not letting these babies out of my sight.”

“It's your funeral,” Darcy murmurs. She looks at Jane. “What do we do about Loki?”

“Don't worry about Loki,” Steve says, struggling to his feet. The convention centre shudders underneath their feet and Steve stumbles to one side. Darcy springs forward and steadies him by the waist. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

“What was that?” Stark says, grabbing hold of the control panel. “Jesus Christ, who are you people?”

“Thanos is here,” Steve says. “We should go.”

“Thanos?” she repeats. “Thanos, the intergalactic warlord? He's here?”

“He is occupied with Loki at the moment, we have some time.”

Darcy raises her eyebrows and nods. This day is a fucking trip. “ _Are_ you psychic?”

Steve looks at her sadly. “I don't know what I am.”

-

The pilot has hauled ass along with everyone else, leaving Stark's ship (“I call them Quinjets,” he informs them) empty.

“Come on,” Darcy says, helping Steve climb in, then goes in after him.

“Can you fly this thing?” Jane asks.

She settles Steve down on a seat. “It's just like a really big cab.”

It is not just like a really big cab, but after a couple of terrifying minutes of turbulence, she gets them on an even path and finds the spaceship equivalent of 'cruise control'. Steve slopes off to lie down in the back, and she lets him rest for half an hour before leaving Stark, who's out cold himself, and Jane to watch the controls.

Steve's lying on a cot, staring at the ceiling.

“Hey,” she says softly.

“Hello,” he says, raising his head.

“Feeling any better now?”

He rolls over onto his side and pushes himself up. “Sucks less.”

She smiles. “That's good. Can I look at your wound?”

He nods, pushes his suspenders off one shoulder and pulls up his t-shirt. She kneels down in front of him and takes a look. She's no doctor, but it doesn't look bad for an energy blast wound. The skin looks burnt, but it seems to be healing pretty quick. “Looks good,” she says.

He nods. “Thank you.”

“It's not much of an imposition, looking at your abs.”

Steve tips his head to one side. Another word she needs to teach him, she guesses. “I meant for helping me. It seems like there are a lot of bad people in the world.”

She nods. “Yeah, there are a lot of assholes, but there's good too.”

“Yes,” he says, staring at her. He leans in towards her, and she leans up and then...

“Darcy,” Jane says, appearing in the doorway. “There's uh, there's the president on the phone.”

Darcy just cannot get a fucking break today. She looks around at Jane. “President?”

“Of the United States.”

The fact that that's not even the weirdest thing to happen to her today... She shakes her head. “Okay,” she says, “just gimme a sec.”

She stands back up and pats Steve on the shoulder. “I've gotta talk to the president, apparently. You okay back here?”

“Yes, I will learn more,” he says, pointing to a computer on the other side of the room. “I am up to V on wikipedia.”

“Good plan.”

She goes back into the cockpit and picks up the ship's receiver. “Yo, President Fury,” she says, and cringes. Why did she just say that?

“Miss Lewis, first let me thank you for your service to your country,” he says.

“Er, sure? How do you even... where did you get this number?”

“We've been tracking your progress all day, Miss Lewis.”

“Oh,” she says, “of course you have. So, what can I do for you?”

“We've been tracking this... ball of fire, and it appears to have picked up speed.”

“How much speed?”

“At the rate it's going now, it'll impact with the Earth in one hour, fifty seven minutes.”

She nods to herself. “I'll call back in two hours.”

-

They gun it the rest of the way to Asgard, skidding to a landing on this long bridge thing that looks like it's made out of glass, with five minutes to go. It's the weirdest fucking thing she's seen all day, and she's seen a lot of weird shit this particular day.

Steve seems kind of dejected when they get out of the ship, but he follows as she hustles him across the bridge and into a kind of throne room looking place.

“Steve, you need to go here,” Jane says, pointing to an altar thingy. It occurs to Darcy that this is kind of seems like a place where people get sacrificed to gods, but she shakes her head, and helps him sit down. Jane wouldn't sacrifice someone to save the universe. Would she?

“So, where do these things go?” Stark asks, tossing one of the cubes from one hand to the other.

“Give me that!” Jane snaps, snatching it away from him.

Darcy looks down at the floor. On either side of the altar on the floor, there are two square imprints, the exact right size for the cubes. “Jane,” she says, pointing at one.

Jane looks at the imprint, then at the cube in her hand speculatively. “Let's give it a try.”

They each take a cube, slot them into place on the floor and stand back.

After a moment's silence, Stark says, “Is something meant to happen?”

“That's a good question,” Darcy says, looking at Jane.

“I think... I think it's Steve,” Jane says, nodding to where he's sitting in a heap on the altar. “He's the key, none of this will work otherwise.”

Darcy takes a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, Lewis to the rescue, yet again.”

She gets onto the altar with him and shakes his shoulder. “Hey, sleepyhead,” she says, “come on, it's almost over.”

Steve shakes his head, pushing at her weakly. “I'm so tired,” he mumbles.

“I know,” she says, pushing his hair back from his face. “But this is all you've got to do, this is it. After this, you get to do whatever you want.”

“Why?” he asks. His eyes are shiny with tears.

“Why what?”

He shrugs. “Everything you create, you use to destroy. War, genocide, famine. What's the point?”

“The point is... the point is there are good things too. Lots of good things. A whole universe full of good things.”

“Like love?” he says softly, his bright blue eyes fixed on her. 

“Yeah, yeah, like love. Exactly like love.”

He shakes his head. “I don't know love. I wasn't built to love, just to protect. I'm just a vessel, just another soldier to sacrifice. Just a drone.”

“No,” she says, “no, no, no, you're not 'just' anything. And I need you. I need you, Steve.”

“Why?”

“Because... because...”

“For God's sake, will you tell him before we all die!” Jane yells.

Darcy whips her head around and glares at her, then looks back at Steve. 

“Please...” Steve murmurs

“Because, because... I love you,” she says, and wraps her hands around his face. “I love you.” She wipes tears from his cheek with her thumb and leans in to kiss him.

His mouth opens against hers a little, and she runs her fingers into his hair, tipping his head further towards her as she deepens the kiss. He gasps into her mouth, and his hands clutch at her arms, gripping tightly. She has no idea what's going on until he throws his head back and this... this _literal_ light pours out of him. She'd thought the 'Divine Light' was some kind of religious title.

She looks around, at the light that's spreading out in a circle from him. It looks like it's electrifying the floor, but it doesn't hurt Jane and Stark as it races past their feet and out beyond the room. Beyond the door, she can see the bridge burst into colour.

Steve goes limp in her arms, and her attention snaps back to him. “Steve!” she cries. “Steve, what's wrong? Are you-- are you dying?”

“Just tired,” he murmurs, eyelids fluttering closed. “Want to sleep, sleep's good.”

“Sleep is good,” she whispers, cradling his head and pulling him round into her arms. “You sleep.”

She can feel tears brimming at the corners of her eyes, and she sniffs hard. Jane scrambles onto the alter beside them, hands reaching out to Steve.

“Is he dead?” Darcy asks, and no amount of sniffing is holding back these tears.

Jane presses her fingers to his neck. “He's...” She laughs. “No, he's alive. He's just unconscious.”

“Oh,” Darcy says, “oh, I thought 'sleeping' was some kind of metaphor for 'I'm dying'.”

“Nope,” Jane says, shaking her head. “And it's been more than five minutes and we're still here, so I guess it worked.”

“Yeah, yeah. When's the next Ragnarök?”

“Five thousand years.”

“Good,” she says, “then let's get the hell out of here.”

Jane looks around at Stark. “You want the tesseracts back?”

“You know what? Just keep 'em. I just-- I'm cool with that,” he says, as he backs out of the door.

-

They're hailed as heroes when they get home. Well, Steve and Darcy are, Jane demurs from the spotlight, and Stark isn't hailed as anything but irritating, but he puts himself front and centre when the press swarm. 

The scientists – who, as it turns out, seem more short-sighted than crazy, evil, or mad – put Steve in a regeneration chamber to recover.

“He'll get lonely,” Darcy says, as she climbs in after him. “Who knows, maybe he's claustrophobic.”

She teaches him to kiss pretty good in there, their legs tangled together, her hands feelings out all those ridiculous muscles she got an eyeful just yesterday in the back seat of her cab. His skin feels as good as it looks.

“You know what sex is, right?” she asks between kisses. She guesses he does from the way his hips are rolling against hers, but she just wants to make sure.

“Hoppi'hoppa,” he replies against her mouth, grunting softly as she pushes her leg up a little, rubbing it against his erection.

“It's called 'hoppi hoppa' in the Divine Language?”

“Yes,” he breathes.

“Good name for it.” She tightens her fingers in his hair and reaches down with her other hand, wrapping it around his dick, jerking him off until he comes groaning into her shoulder. “We're going to be doing a lot of hopping,” she promises.

**Author's Note:**

> So... someone actually [created an English to Divine Language dictionary](http://divinelanguage.webs.com/englishtodivinian.htm) from the movie, which is where I worked out Steve's lines. 
> 
> Here are the translations of the lines that weren't obvious in the text:
> 
> O deno schichkéman - Are you okay?
> 
> Monda schichkéman, elgoun'doloun - I'm okay, wait.
> 
> Mo bana menda y'am eto oum seno - I think I'm a personification of him. (closest I could get to 'clone'.)
> 
> Met envolet kala - Be asleep well.
> 
> Mo asountimon hila oualarta, De’oum luminaï - I deliver the casket, Divine Light.


End file.
